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Monday, October 22, 2012

A bad day at the lab for GM reserach

During this
summer, I recall reading in the Sunday Times that the environmental NGOs are
beginning to re-think their strategy on GM foods. I see some evidence that this
is the case since I cannot find any mention of the following paper on any of
their websites: Séralini et al (2012)
“Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically
modified maize”[1]. The
publication of this paper has led to the greatest backlash by the scientific
community that I have seen in 4 decades in this business. Essentially, Séralini
published a paper showing that rats exposed to a GM food (maize) and a
herbicide (which is used with the resistant GM crop) developed breast tumors
significantly faster and to a greater extent than controls rats over 104 weeks (2
years). The most significant critic is the European Food Safety Authority
(EFSA), which is the independent body charged with protecting consumer health
in the EU and which is the judge, on the consumers’ behalf, of all scientific
publications on food safety including those on GM technology.

The authors used
Sprague-Dawley rats that will naturally develop tumors over their lifetime
irrespective of any dietary or other treatment and the authors did not discuss
the implications of this natural tendency to tumor development for their study.
They also used 10 rats per treatment, which according to OECD protocols is
adequate for standard 90-day toxicity studies. Monsanto’s submission to EFSA on
the GM maize (NK603) used only 10 rats per treatment, but it was for a 90-day
toxicity study. However, Séralini’s study was over a “lifetime” and the OECD
guidelines recommend the numbers now be increased to 20 per treatment for
chemical toxicity tests but that for carcinogenicity studies, this should be
increased to 50 per treatment. In an article on this topic, Nature contacted
Harlan Laboratories who supplied the rats and were told that for this strain of
rat, only 33% of males and 50% of females live to 2 years. According to the
OECD protocols, if a study is to last 104 weeks, then the survival rate should
be 50% at least and that then 130 rats (half male half female) should be used
per treatment.

The lead author
apparently agrees that more rats per treatment would have boosted his
statistical power but according to Nature[2],
he argues that he did not design the study to find tumors.If at this stage you are confused, then
you’re normal!!!

Further
criticism from EFSA includes the fact that no information is given on the
composition of the rat diets and that no data is given on how much of the
herbicide was consumed through its route, drinking water. No data are given on
lesions that were found which were not tumors or dropout rates and reasons for
dropouts. In addition, the EFSA working group state that the statistical
techniques used were not “commonly-used statistical methods” and that the
authors do not state whether the unusual statistical techniques they used were,
in fact, the a priori choice and if
so, why so? Finally EFSA requested the basic data from the authors to examine
these shortcomings and they were refused access. Trust is hard won but easily
lost.

If all that
wasn’t bad enough, Nature reports on a very sinister dimension to this saga,
which has not received widespread attention. According to their correspondent,
Declan Butler, the author orchestrated a very tight media offensive that
included a film and his new book (Tous Cobayes: OGM, Pesticides, Produits Chimique:
All Guinea Pigs, GMOs, pesticides and chemicals) on the work. A select group of
journalists were invited (not from Nature) to preview the paper and were asked
to sign a confidentiality agreement demanding total secrecy until formal
publication. A breach of the terms of the confidentiality agreement would
require, according to Nature, the following: “A refund of the cost of the study
of several million euros would be considered damages if the premature
disclosure questioned the release of the study”. I’m in the wrong business I
believe!!!!

The Ethics
Committee of one of France’s most august academic bodies Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique described the PR exercise as “inappropriate”.

Who’d like to be
the first to write a review of his new book on Amazon[3]?
Well although I would, it would be so slanderous that I could not ever afford
the libel fee I’d have to pay.

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"Ever seen a fat fox ~ Human obesity explored"

About Me

I graduated from University College Dublin in 1971 with an Masters in Agricultural Chemistry, took a PhD at Sydney University in 1976 and joined the University of Southampton Medical School as a lecturer in human nutrition in 1977. In 1984 I returned to Ireland to take up a post at the Department of Clinical Medicine Trinity College Dublin and was appointed as professor of human nutrition. In 2006 I left Trinity and moved to University College Dublin as Director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health. I am a former President of the Nutrition Society and I've served on several EU and UN committees on nutrition and Health. I have published over 350+ peer reviewed scientific papers in Public Health Nutrition and Molecular Nutrition and am principal investigator on several national and EU projects (www.ucd.ie/jingo; www.food4me.org). My popular books are "Something to chew on ~ challenging controversies in human nutrition" and "Ever seen a fat fox: human obesity explored"